Unrelenting tornadoes that tore through parts of the South and Midwest killed at least 11 people, collapsed the roof of a packed theater during a heavy metal concert in Illinois, and left small towns and big cities throughout the region bewildered Saturday by the damage. The Associated Press has the story:
Tornadoes kill 11 across US Midwest and South
Newslooks- WYNNE, Ark. (AP)
Tornadoes that tore through parts of the South and Midwest killed at least 11 people, collapsed the roof of a packed theater during a heavy metal concert in Illinois, and left small towns and big cities throughout the region bewildered Saturday by the damage.
Possibly dozens of tornadoes touched down into the night across at least seven states, laying waste to homes and businesses and stripping bark and limbs off trees, as part of a sprawling storm system that also brought wildfires to the southern Plains and blizzard conditions to the Upper Midwest.
Tens of thousands lost power as the storms smothered a broad swath of the country home to some 85 million people. The dead included four in the small town of Wynne, Arkansas. Other deaths were reported in Alabama, Illinois, Indiana, Mississippi and the Little Rock area.
Buildings were flattened and debris covered the roads in Wynne, a community of about 8,000 people 50 miles (80 kilometers) west of Memphis, Tennessee. Crews sawed fallen trees to clear roads Saturday morning.
“I’m in a panic trying to get home, but we can’t get home,” City Councilmember Lisa Powell Carter said Friday night. “Wynne is so demolished. … There’s houses destroyed, trees down on streets.”
In Belvidere, Illinois, a tornado collapsed the roof of the Apollo Theatre as 260 people attended a heavy metal concert, killing one person and injuring 28, five of them severely, officials said.
People rushed to lift the collapsed part of the ceiling and pull people out of the rubble, Gabrielle Lewellyn, who had just entered the theater, told WTVO-TV.
“They dragged someone out from the rubble, and I sat with him and I held his hand and I was (telling him) ‘It’s going to be OK.’ I didn’t really know much else what to do,” Lewellyn said.
The venue’s Facebook page said the bands scheduled to perform were Morbid Angel, Crypta, Skeletal Remains and Revocation.
Three people died in Indiana’s Sullivan County, and some residents in the county seat, Sullivan, remained missing Saturday, said officials in the area near the Illinois line, about 95 miles (150 kilometers) southwest of Indianapolis.
“Homes in both the city and county are severely damaged and some are completely leveled,” Sullivan County Sheriff Jason Bobbitt posted on social media. “Our worst fears became a reality earlier when we learned that members of our community have lost their lives.”
Gas leaks were reported in the area, and the sheriff’s office ordered people to stay out to make way for emergency responders and utility workers.
In the Little Rock area, at least one person was killed and more than two dozen were hurt, some critically, authorities said.
The tornado in Little Rock tore first through neighborhoods in the western part of the Arkansas capital and shredded a small shopping center that included a Kroger grocery store. It then crossed the Arkansas River into North Little Rock and surrounding cities, causing widespread damage and killing one person.
Little Rock resident Niki Scott took cover in the bathroom after her husband called to warn her of a tornado. She could hear glass shattering and emerged to find that her house was one of the few on her street that didn’t have a tree on it.
“It’s just like everyone says. It got really quiet, then it got really loud,” Scott said afterward, as chainsaws roared and sirens blared.
Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders activated 100 members of the National Guard to help local authorities respond.
A suspected tornado killed a woman in northern Alabama’s Madison County as it destroyed several buildings, said county official Mac McCutcheon. And in northern Mississippi’s Pontotoc County, officials confirmed one death and four injuries.
The storms struck just hours after President Joe Biden visited the Mississippi community of Rolling Fork, where tornadoes last week reduced destroyed parts of town.
In western Tennessee, Tipton County Sheriff Shannon Beasley wrote on Facebook early Saturday that there was “much devastation” and “some severe injuries” but no reports of deaths yet. But he said many families “lost homes that were leveled to the ground.”
Tornadoes also caused sporadic damage in eastern Iowa. One veered just west of Iowa City, home to the University of Iowa. Video from KCRG-TV showed toppled power poles and roofs ripped off an apartment building in the suburb of Coralville and damaged homes in the city of Hills.
The number of customers in Arkansas without electricity has fallen from nearly 90,000 to about 52,000, according to Poweroutage.us. There were 69,000 without power in Indiana, 33,000 in Illinois and 1,300 in Oklahoma.
Outages were also reported in Iowa, Missouri, Tennessee, Wisconsin and Texas.
Hail broke windows on cars and buildings northeast of Peoria, Illinois. And blizzard conditions whipped parts of Minnesota and Wisconsin, cutting power to some customers in the Twin Cities area.
Nearly 100 new wildfires were reported Friday in Oklahoma, according to the state forest service, and firefighters hoped to gain ground against them Saturday. Fires will remain a danger through the week, especially for northern and western parts of the state.
Crews battled several blazes near El Dorado, Kansas, and some residents were asked to evacuate, including about 250 elementary school children who were relocated to a high school.
